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Monday, September 17, 2018

From Wikipedia"USS Monitor was an iron-hulled steamship. Built during the American Civil War, she was the first ironclad warship commissioned by the Union Navy. Monitor is most famous for her central role in the Battle of Hampton Roads on 9 March 1862, where, under the command of Lieutenant John Worden, she fought the casemate ironcladCSS Virginia (built on the hull of the former steam frigateUSS Merrimack) to a standstill. The unique design of the ship, distinguished by its revolving turret which was designed by American inventor Theodore Timby, was quickly duplicated and established the monitor type of warship.
The remainder of the ship was designed by the Swedish-born engineer and inventor John Ericsson and hurriedly built in Brooklyn in only 101 days. Monitor
presented a new concept in ship design and employed a variety of new
inventions and innovations in ship building that caught the attention of
the world. The impetus to build Monitor was prompted by the news that the Confederates were building an ironclad warship, named Virginia, that could effectively engage the Union ships blockading Hampton Roads and the James River leading to Richmond and ultimately advance on Washington, D.C. and other cities, virtually unchallenged. Before Monitor could reach Hampton Roads, the Confederate ironclad had destroyed the sail frigates USS Cumberland and USS Congress and had run the steam frigate USS Minnesotaaground. That night Monitor arrived and the following morning, just as Virginia set to finish off Minnesota,
the new Union ironclad confronted the Confederate ship, preventing her
from wreaking further destruction on the wooden Union ships. A four-hour
battle ensued, both ships pounding the other with close-range cannon
fire, although neither ship could destroy or seriously damage the other.
This was the first-ever battle fought between two armored warships and
marked a turning point in naval warfare.
After the Confederates were forced to destroy Virginia as they withdrew in early May, Monitor sailed up the James River to support the Union Army during the Peninsula Campaign. The ship participated in the Battle of Drewry's Bluff
later that month and remained in the area giving support to General
McClellan's forces on land until she was ordered to join the blockaders off North Carolina in December. On her way there she foundered while under tow, during a storm off Cape Hatteras on the last day of the year. Monitor's wreck was discovered in 1973 and has been partially salvaged. Her guns, gun turret, engine and other relics are on display at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia.

The Navy tested an "underwater locator" in August 1949 by searching an area south of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse for the wreck of Monitor.
It found a 140-foot (42.7 m) long object bulky enough to be a
shipwreck, in 310 feet (94.5 m) feet of water that was thought to be Monitor, but powerful currents negated attempts by divers to investigate. Retired Rear AdmiralEdward Ellsberg proposed using external pontoons to raise the wreck in 1951, the same method of marine salvage he had used on the sunken submarineS-51, for the cost of $250,000. Four years later, Robert F. Marx claimed to have discovered the wreck based on the idea she had drifted into shallow water north of the lighthouse
before sinking. Marx said he had dived on the wreck and placed a Coke
bottle with his name on it in one of the gun barrels, although he never
provided any proof of his story.Interest in locating the ship revived in the early 1970s and Duke University, the National Geographic Society and the National Science Foundation sponsored an expedition in August 1973 to search for the wreck using a towed sonar system. The Duke team was led by John G. Newton (no known relation to the Isaac Newton that served on the Monitor). On 27 August, Monitor was discovered 111 years after sinking, near Cape Hatteras at coordinates 35°0′6″N75°24′23″WCoordinates: 35°0′6″N75°24′23″W.
They sent a camera down to photograph the wreck, but the pictures were
so fuzzy as to be useless; on a second attempt the camera snagged
something on the wreck and was lost. The sonar images did not match what
they expected the wreck to look like until they realized that the
sinking vessel had turned over while descending and was resting at the
bottom upside down. The team announced their discovery on 8 March 1974.
Another expedition was mounted that same month to confirm the discovery
and the research submersibleAlcoa Sea Probe was able to take still photos and video of the wreck that confirmed it was Monitor.These photos revealed that the wreck was disintegrating and the
discovery raised another issue. Since the Navy had formally abandoned
the wreck in 1953, it could be exploited by divers and private salvage
companies as it lay outside North Carolina's territorial limits. To preserve the ship, the wreck, and everything around it, a .5-nautical-mile (0.93 km; 0.58 mi) radius was designated as the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, the first U.S. marine sanctuary, on 30 January 1975. Monitor was also designated a National Historic Landmark on 23 June 1986.

USS Monitor anchor at the Mariners' Museum

In 1977, scientists were finally able to view the wreckage in person as the submersible Johnson Sea Link was used to inspect it. The Sea Link was able to ferry divers down to the sunken vessel and retrieve small artifacts. U.S. Navy interest in raising the entire ship ended in 1978 when Captain Willard F. Searle Jr.
calculated the cost and possible damage expected from the operation:
$20 million to stabilize the vessel in place, or as much as $50 million
to bring all of it to the surface.
Research continued and artifacts continued to be recovered, including
the ship's 1,500-pound (680 kg) anchor in 1983. The growing number of
relics required conservation and a proper home so the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA), in charge of all U.S. marine sanctuaries, selected the
Mariners' Museum on 9 March 1987 after considering proposals from
several other institutions.

Initial efforts in 1995 by Navy and NOAA divers to raise the
warship's propeller were foiled by an abnormally stormy season off Cape
Hatteras. Realizing that raising the whole wreck was impractical for
financial reasons as well as the inability to bring up the wreck intact,
NOAA developed a comprehensive plan to recover the most significant
parts of the ship, namely her engine, propeller, guns, and turret. It
estimated that the plan would cost over 20 million dollars to implement
over four years. The Department of Defense Legacy Resource Management
Program contributed $14.5 million. The Navy divers, mainly from its two Mobile Diving and Salvage Units, would perform the bulk of the work necessary in order to train in deep sea conditions and evaluate new equipment.Another effort to raise Monitor's
propeller was successful on 8 June 1998, although the amount of effort
required to work in the difficult conditions off Cape Hatteras was
underestimated and the fewer than 30 divers used were nearly
overwhelmed. The 1999 dive season was mostly research oriented as divers
investigated the wreck in detail, planning how to recover the engine
and determining if they could stabilize the hull so that it would not
collapse onto the turret. In 2000 the divers shored up the port side of the hull with bags of grout,
installed the engine recovery system, an external framework to which
the engine would be attached, in preparation for the next season, and
made over five times as many dives as they had the previous season.The 2001 dive season concentrated on raising the ship's steam engine and condenser.
Hull plates had to be removed to access the engine compartment and both
the engine and the condenser had to be separated from the ship, the
surrounding wreckage and each other. A Mini Rover ROV
was used to provide visibility of the wreck and divers to the support
staff above water. The engine was raised on 16 July and the condenser
three days later by the crane bargeWotan. Saturation diving was evaluated by the Navy that dive season on Monitor and proved to be very successful, allowing divers to maximize their time on the bottom.The surface-supplied divers evaluated the use of heliox due to the depth of the wreck. It also proved to be successful once the dive tables were adjusted.

The turret, moments after it reached the surface, secure in the "spider" lifting frame

Much like the previous year, the 2002 dive season was dedicated to
lifting the 120-long-ton (120 t) turret to the surface. Around 160
divers were assigned to remove the parts of the hull, including the
armor belt, that lay on top of the turret using chisels, exothermiccutting torches and 20,000 psi (137,895 kPa; 1,406 kgf/cm2) hydroblasters. They removed as much of the debris from inside the turret as possible to reduce the weight to be lifted. This was usually concreted
coal as one of the ship's coal bunkers had ruptured and dumped most of
its contents into the turret. The divers prepared the turret roof for
the first stage of the lift by excavating underneath the turret and
placed steel beams and angle irons to reinforce it for its move onto a
lifting platform for the second stage. A large, eight-legged lifting
frame, nicknamed the "spider", was carefully positioned over the turret
to move it onto the platform and the entire affair would be lifted by
the crane mounted on the Wotan. The divers discovered one
skeleton in the turret on 26 July before the lift and spent a week
carefully chipping about half of it free of the concreted debris; the
other half was inaccessible underneath the rear of one of the guns.With Tropical Storm Cristobal bearing down on the recovery team, and time and money running out,
the team made the decision to raise the turret on 5 August 2002, after
41 days of work, and the gun turret broke the surface at 5:30 pm to the
cheers of everyone aboard Wotan and other recovery ships nearby. As archaeologists examined the contents of the turret after it has been landed aboard Wotan,
they discovered a second skeleton, but removing it did not begin until
the turret arrived at the Mariners' Museum for conservation. The remains
of these sailors were transferred to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, in the hope that they could be identified.

Only 16 of the crew were not rescued by Rhode Island before Monitor sank and the forensic anthropologists at JPAC were able to rule out the three missing black crewmen based on the shape of the femurs and skulls. Among the most promising of the 16 candidates were crew members Jacob Nicklis, Robert Williams and William Bryan, but a decade passed without their identities being discovered. On 8 March 2013 their remains were buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.In 2003 NOAA divers and volunteers returned to the Monitor
with the goal of obtaining overall video of the site to create a
permanent record of the current conditions on the wreck after the turret
recovery. Jeff Johnston of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary (MNMS) also wanted a definitive image of the vessel's pilothouse. During the dives, Monitor's iron pilothouse was located near the bow of the vessel and documented for the first time by videographer Rick Allen, of Nautilus Productions, in its inverted position.Conservation of the propeller was completed nearly three years
after its recovery and it is on display in the Monitor Center at the
Mariners' Museum. As of 2013, conservation of the engine, its components, the turret and the guns continues. The Dahlgren guns were removed from the turret in September 2004 and placed in their own conservation tanks.
Among some of the artifacts recovered from the sunken vessel was a red
signal lantern, possibly the one used to send a distress signal to Rhode Island and the last thing to be seen before Monitor
sank in 1862 – it was the first object recovered from the site in 1977.
A gold wedding band was also recovered from the hand of the skeletal
remains of one of Monitor's crew members found in the turret.Northrop Grumman Shipyard in Newport News constructed a full-scale non-seaworthy static replica of Monitor. The replica was laid down in February 2005 and completed just two months later on the grounds of the Mariners' Museum.
The Monitor National Marine Sanctuary conducts occasional dives on the
wreck to monitor and record any changes in its condition and its
environment.

The Greenpoint Monitor Monument in McGolrick Park, Brooklyn, depicts a sailor from Monitor pulling on a capstan. The sculptor Antonio de Filippo was commissioned by the State of New York
in the 1930s for a bronze statue to commemorate the Battle of Hampton
Roads, John Ericsson, and the crew of the ship. It was dedicated on 6
November 1938. A vandal doused it with white paint on 7 January 2013.In 1995 the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp commemorating USS Monitor and CSS Virginia depicting the two ships while engaged in their famous battle at Hampton Roads. For an image of the stamp, see footnote link.The 150th anniversary of the ship's loss prompted several events in commemoration. A memorial to Monitor and her lost crew members was erected in the Civil War section of Hampton National Cemetery by NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, together with the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and dedicated on 29 December 2012. The Greenpoint Monitor Museum commemorated the ship and her crew with an event on 12 January 2013 at the grave sites of those Monitor crew members buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, followed by a service in the cemetery's chapel.New Jersey-based indie rock band Titus Andronicus named their critically acclaimed sophomore album, 2010's The Monitor, for the ship. Featured on the album's sleeve are the crewmen of Monitor,
taken from a tintype portrait. The album's interwoven references to the
Civil War include speeches and writings from the period, as well as the
side-long closing track "The Battle of Hampton Roads". The latter
refers to the Monitor's encounter with CSS Virginia in prominent detail. Singer/guitarist Patrick Stickles commented while making the album that he was inspired by Ken Burns's The Civil War and the ship itself so much that he decided to name Titus Andronicus's second album in its honor.

Friday, September 7, 2018

The Dornier Do 335 Pfeil ("Arrow") was a World War IIheavy fighter built by the Dornier company. The two-seater trainer version was called Ameisenbär ("anteater"). The Pfeil's performance was much better than other twin-engine designs due to its unique push-pull configuration and the lower aerodynamic drag of the in-line alignment of the two engines. It was Nazi Germany's fastest piston-engined aircraft of World War II. The Luftwaffe
was desperate to get the design into operational use, but delays in
engine deliveries meant that only a handful were delivered before the
war ended.

The origins of the Do 335 trace back to World War I when Claude Dornier designed a number of flying boats
featuring remotely driven propellers and later, due to problems with
the drive shafts, tandem engines. Tandem engines were used on most of
the multi-engine Dornier flying boats that followed, including the
highly successful Do JWal and the gigantic Do X. The remote propeller drive, intended to eliminate parasitic drag from the engine entirely, was tried in the innovative but unsuccessful Do 14,
and elongated, tubular drive shafts as later used in the Do 335 saw use
in the rear engines of the four-engined, twinned tandem-layout Do 26 flying boat.
There are many advantages to this design over the more
traditional system of placing one engine on each wing, the most
important being power from two engines with the frontal area (and thus
drag) of a single-engine design, allowing for higher performance. It
also keeps the weight of the twin powerplants near, or on, the aircraft
centerline, increasing the roll rate compared to a traditional twin. In addition, a single engine failure does not lead to asymmetric thrust, and in normal flight there is no net torque, so the plane is easy to handle. The choice of a full "four-surface" set of cruciform tail surfaces in the Do 335's rear fuselage design, included a ventral vertical fin–rudder assembly to project downwards from the extreme rear of the fuselage,
in order to protect the rear propeller from an accidental ground strike
on takeoff. The presence of the rear pusher propeller also mandated the
provision for an ejection seat
for safe escape from a damaged aircraft, and designing the rear
propeller and dorsal fin mounts to use explosive bolts to jettison them
before an ejection was attempted — as well as twin canopy jettison
levers, one per side located to either side of the forward cockpit interior just below the
sills of the five-panel windscreen's sides, to jettison the canopy from
atop the cockpit before ejection.In 1939, Dornier was busy working on the P.59 high-speed bomber
project, which featured the tandem engine layout. In 1940, he
commissioned a test aircraft, closely modeled on the airframe of the
early versions of the Dornier Do 17
bomber but only 40% of the size of the larger bomber, with no
aerodynamic bodies of any sort on the wing panels (the original Do 17
had twin engine nacelles on its wings) and fitted with a retractable tricycle landing gear to validate his concept for turning the rear pusher propeller with an engine located far away from it and using a long tubular driveshaft. This aircraft, the Göppingen Gö 9, showed no unforeseen difficulties with this arrangement, but work on the P.59 was stopped in early 1940 when Hermann Göring[citation needed] ordered the cancellation of all projects that would not be completed within a year or so.
In May 1942, Dornier submitted an updated version with a 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) bombload as the P.231, in response to a requirement for a single seat, Schnellbomber-like high-speed bomber/intruder. P.231 was selected as the winner after beating rival designs from Arado, Junkers, and Blohm & Voss
development contract was awarded as the Do 335. In autumn 1942, Dornier
was told that the Do 335 was no longer required, and instead a
multi-role fighter based on the same general layout would be accepted. This delayed the prototype delivery as it was modified for the new role.

Do-335s on the apron at Oberpfaffenhofen at the war's end, including unfinished two-seat versions

The use of a nose-mount annular radiator for the forward engine (much like a Jumo 211-powered Ju 88, or Jumo 213-powered Focke-Wulf Fw 190D-9) and a ventral-fuselage mount airscooped radiator installation for cooling the rear engine (appearing like that on a P-51 Mustang) was distinctive. When fitted with DB 603A engines delivering 1,750 PS
(1,287 kW, 1,726 hp) at takeoff it had a pair of the largest
displacement (at 44.52 litres) inverted V12 aircraft engine design
mass-produced during the Third Reich's existence. The Do 335 V1 first
prototype, bearing the Stammkennzeichen (factory radio code) of CP+UA, flew on 26 October 1943 under the control of Flugkapitän
Hans Dieterle, a regular Heinkel test pilot and later primary Dornier
test pilot. However, several problems during the initial flight of the
Do 335 would continue to plague the aircraft through most of its short
history. Issues were found with the weak landing gear
and with the main gear's wheel well doors, resulting in them being
removed for the remainder of the V1's test flights. The Do 335 V1 made
27 flights, flown by three different pilots. During these test flights
the V2 (W.Nr 230002), Stammkennzeichen CP+UB was completed and
made its first flight on 31 December 1943, again under the control of
Dieterle. New to the V2 were upgraded DB 603A-2 engines, and several
refinements learned from the test flights of the V1 as well as further
windtunnel testing. On 20 January 1944, the Do 335 V3 (W.Nr. 230004), Stammkennzeichen
CP+UC was completed and flown for its first time by Werner Altrogge.
The V3 was powered by the new pre-production DB 603G-0 engines which
could produce 1,900 PS (1,400 kW) at take-off and featured a slightly
redesigned canopy which included twin rear-view mirrors in blisters, one
in each of two matching side panels of the well-framed, eleven-panel
main canopy's openable section. Following the flights of the V3, in mid
January 1944, RLM ordered five more prototypes (V21–V25), to be built as
night fighters. By this time, more than 60 hours of flight time had
been put on the Do 335 and reports showed it to be a good handling, but
more importantly, very fast aircraft, described by GeneralfeldmarschallErhard Milch himself as "...holding its own in speed and altitude with the P-38
and it does not suffer from engine reliability issues". Thus the Do 335
was scheduled to begin mass construction, with the initial order of 120
preproduction aircraft to be manufactured by DWF (Dornier-Werke
Friedrichshafen) to be completed no later than March 1946. This number
included a number of bombers, destroyers (heavy fighters), and several
yet to be developed variants. At the same time, DWM (Dornier-Werke
München) was scheduled to build over 2000 Do 335s in various models, due
for delivery in March 1946 as well.
On 23 May 1944, Hitler, as part of the developing Jägernotprogramm
directive, which took effect on 3 July, ordered maximum priority to be
given to Do 335 production. The main production line was intended to be
at Manzell, but a bombing raid in March destroyed the tooling and forced
Dornier to set up a new line at Oberpfaffenhofen. The decision was
made, along with the rapid shut-down of many other military aircraft
development programs, to cancel the Heinkel He 219night fighter, which also used the DB 603 engines, and use its production facilities for the Do 335 as well. However, Ernst Heinkel managed to delay, and eventually ignore, its implementation, continuing to produce examples of the He 219A.
At least 16 prototype Do 335s were known to have flown (V1–V12, W.Nr 230001-230012 and Muster-series
prototypes M13–M17, W.Nr 230013-230017) on a number of DB603 engine
subtypes including the DB 603A, A-2, G-0, E and E-1. The first
preproduction Do 335 (A-0s) starting with W.Nr 240101, Stammkennzeichen
VG+PG, were delivered in July 1944. Approximately 22 preproduction
aircraft were thought to have been completed and flown before the end of
the war, including approximately 11 A-0s converted to A-11s for
training purposes. One such aircraft was transferred to the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, and later, after a rear-engine fire burnt through the elevator controls during a flight, crashed onto a local school.The first 10 Do 335 A-0s were delivered for testing in May. By late 1944, the Do 335 A-1 was on the production line. It was similar to the A-0 but with the uprated DB 603 E-1 engines and two underwing hardpoints for additional bombs, drop tanks or guns. It had a maximum speed of 763 km/h (474 mph) at 6 500 m (21 300 ft) with MW 50
boost, or 686 km/h (426 mph) without boost, and climbed to 8 000 m (26
250 ft) in under 15 minutes. Even with one engine out, it reached about
563 km/h (350 mph).Delivery commenced in January 1945. When the United States Army overran the Oberpfaffenhofen factory in late April 1945, only 11 Do 335 A-1 single-seat fighter-bombers and two Do 335 A-12 trainers had been completed.
French ace Pierre Clostermann claimed the first Allied combat encounter with a Pfeil in April 1945. He describes leading a flight of four Hawker Tempests from No. 3 Squadron RAF
over northern Germany, when he intercepted a lone Do 335 flying at
maximum speed at treetop level. Detecting the British aircraft, the
German pilot reversed course to evade. Despite the Tempests'
considerable low altitude speed, the Royal Air Force fighters were not able to catch up or even get into firing position.

Only one Do 335 survives, the second preproduction Do 335 A-0, designated A-02, with construction number (Werknummer) 240 102, and factory radio code registration, or Stammkennzeichen, of VG+PH. The aircraft was assembled at the Dornier plant in Oberpfaffenhofen, Bavaria
on 16 April 1945. It was captured by Allied forces at the plant on 22
April 1945. VG+PH was one of two Do 335s to be shipped to the United
States aboard the Royal Navyescort carrierHMS Reaper, along with other captured German aircraft, to be used for testing and evaluation under a USAAF program called "Operation Lusty". One Do 335 (registration FE-1012) went to the USAAF and was tested in early 1946 at Freeman Field, Indiana, USA. Its fate is not recorded.
VG+PH went to the Navy for evaluation and was sent to the Test and Evaluation Center, Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Maryland, USA. Following testing from 1945 to 1948, the aircraft languished in outside storage at Naval Air Station Norfolk.
In 1961, it was donated to the Smithsonian's National Air Museum,
though it remained in deteriorating condition at Norfolk for several
more years before being moved to the National Air and Space Museum's storage facility in Suitland, Maryland. In October 1974, VG+PH was returned to the Dornier plant in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany (then building the Alpha Jet)
for a complete restoration. In 1975, the aircraft was restored by
Dornier employees, many of whom had worked on the airplane originally.
They were surprised that the explosive charges built into the aircraft
to blow off the dorsal fin and rear propeller prior to pilot ejection
were still installed and active 30 years later.[citation needed]Following restoration the completed Do 335 was displayed at the Hannover, Germany Airshow from 1 May to 9 May 1976. After the air show, the aircraft was loaned to the Deutsches Museum in Munich, where it was on display until 1988, when it was shipped back to Silver Hill, Maryland. VG+PH can be seen today in the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum alongside other unique late-war German aircraft, such as the only known example of the Arado Ar 234 B-2 Blitz jet reconnaissance-bomber, and the fully restored fuselage and tail surfaces of the only complete surviving Heinkel He 219A Uhu (Eagle-Owl) night fighter (the wings and engines/nacelles are still undergoing restoration).